Ramblings and rants, puppies and play, dreams and drama.

Post navigation

How to Make One Twain

I tried something last week that made me really nervous: a split cheat day!

Mike and I were BOTH off for the weekend, and I was really excited about spending some real time with him. On Saturday morning, I did my weigh-in (down 1.8), and was getting ready to take Spriggan to training class graduation. I had been thinking about it since the night before: I’d been craving Olive Garden (I know, I know… but they put some addictive substance in the salad), so I knew I wanted to eat there, but I also thought if we were to see a movie, I’d like popcorn… AND I wanted a cherry turnover from this local bakery… and I though it’d be nice to have a big breakfast, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen before puppy class… sooooooo… I said to myself, “Beulah May*, what if you split your cheat day into two days?”

Whaaaaaat?!

So, yeah, I figured… I would eat a healthy breakfast on Saturday and log the calories for SUNDAY morning. Then, I’d remember the time I started going crazy with breadsticks, and on Sunday, I’d STOP cheating at that time.

On Saturday, I logged everything I ate until 4:00 PM and then stopped keeping track. On Sunday, I STARTED logging at 4:00 and stayed within my calorie budget as if it had been one day. In the off-the-record period, I had salad, breadsticks, ravioli (disappointing), Reese’s Pieces, popcorn, root beer, pancakes, eggs, hash browns, grits, (decaf) coffee… it was glorious.

FREEDOM!!

The nice thing about splitting it up was that I didn’t feel the compulsion to overeat as strongly. The first day, I’m all, “Hey, if I don’t get to that craving today, I can eat it tomorrow!” And the second day, I’m like, “Well… I dunno if this whole ‘split cheat day’ thing is gonna work. I’d better be kinda conservative with my intake.” So, although my body freaked out a bit about the big, greasy breakfast, I was able to stop myself from just shoveling food in constantly in order to make cheat day ‘worth it’.